When working for a midsized company, there are often a lot of tasks that need to get done, and sometimes management will get mixed up as to who is doing what.

What would you do if your boss asked you for an update on a project that was behind, and when you told him that it wasn’t your project, your co-worker got upset because it made her look bad?

That is what happened to the worker in this story, and he is refusing to apologize for not ‘having her back’ in the meeting.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for not apologizing for something I didn’t do?

So, there’s this thing that happened at work the other day, and I’m not sure if I’m being unreasonable or not.

I (30M) work at a medium-sized company where I’m part of a team that handles a lot of different projects.

Recently, we had a meeting with my boss and one of my colleagues, let’s call her Jane (28F). Jane is responsible for a specific part of the project that she was supposed to handle, and I wasn’t involved with it directly.

During the meeting, my boss got really frustrated because the project she was handling had fallen through.

He turned to me and said something along the lines of, “I thought you were supposed to be handling that.”

He handled it properly.

I was a bit taken aback because, as I mentioned, I wasn’t involved with that aspect of the project at all.

I immediately explained to him that I wasn’t even aware of it, and it wasn’t my responsibility to handle it. I just calmly stated that it wasn’t in my scope and didn’t want to misrepresent myself by taking credit for something I didn’t do.

Now, here’s where things get awkward.

After the meeting, Jane pulled me aside and said that I had “thrown her under the bus” by not backing her up in front of the boss. She said I should’ve just supported her in the meeting, even if it wasn’t my responsibility, because it would’ve made her look better.

I tried to explain to her that I wasn’t trying to make her look bad, I was just clarifying the situation because I didn’t want to be held accountable for something I didn’t know about or have control over.

She is out of line here.

But she seemed really upset and told me I owed her an apology for not having her back.

I didn’t apologize.

To me, it felt like I was doing the right thing by sticking to the facts and not taking responsibility for something that wasn’t my fault.

But now, it’s been a few days, and Jane has been giving me the cold shoulder. She’s been avoiding me at work, and there’s this tension in the air. It’s a bit awkward, and I’m not sure if I should have just apologized to smooth things over, even though I didn’t think I was wrong.

She just wants someone to share the blame.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’m just really confused.

I get that maybe in a work environment, sometimes it’s better to just keep the peace, but at the same time, I feel like if I apologized for something I didn’t do, it would be dishonest.

I don’t want to be seen as someone who will take the fall for other people’s mistakes.

Am I wrong for not apologizing? Should I have just let it go and supported her in that moment?

AITA?

No way, if he ‘had her back’ he would have looked bad to the boss because of her actions. She doesn’t deserve an apology at all.

Read on to see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about this.

This person makes a great point.

Jane is way out of line.

This person says Jane needs to grow up.

This commenter says she owes him an apology.

Yes, this will always backfire.

She doesn’t accept responsibility for her failure and now wants an apology? No way!

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.